Should ITV hold on to the RWC rights...

ITV showed how completly inept they where today.

The biggest event in Rugby, they have continued to maintain the rights over broadcasting the RWC.

So why didn't they show the Opening Ceremony, like their advertised show implied.

Absolutley DREADFUL.

NO coveregae of the opening ceremony, they just showed the speaches with a few seconds of the ceremony.... and then straight after "over to Dunedin" to hear from the English camp..... FFS, this was the opening ceremony. England arent playing, give some credit to those who are, and credit to all those who worked hard to put on a ceremony, BY SHOWING IT....

I'm glad that S4C had the grace to realise that the opening ceremnony of a World Cup is important and showed it.... Well done S4C...

Can you imagine the outrage next year if the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics is not shown, just some muppets in the studio performing some pointless player analysis and news....

Bet they wont do that come 2015 when England hold the cup.

So on this basis, who do you think should hold broadcasting rights for future Rugby World Cups. And any rational to debate would be good.

Personally I think the BBC.

Yes they have some annoying pundits who think the sun shines out of Wilko's backside, but on the whole, their coverage is good. It is also regional (ie. BBC Wales, BBC Scotland, BBC English regions) which allow them to have comentators to reflect the feeling of that region, rather than the usual England in 2003 rubbish we get when England are not even playing.

Also, and the biggest point for me, is that it is "free" and available to all, and we dont get the players running out of the tunnel for the commentator to say we'll be back in a minute.... over to the ads.

It has to be the BBC in my opinion.

I know it's all about money and who pays most but the ITV coverage is so poor that it puts people off watching. This can't be what the IRB wants. I hope ITV buck up their ideas but I can't see it happening now after 24 years of poor coverage!

I don't really care. I only watch it for the games and the BBC camera work is pretty bad sometimes. Haven't seen a game yet on ITV so I'll wait and see.

Why is the opening ceremony important? what is it's purpose other wasting money? Most pre/post game stuff is boring and pointless at best (annoying and frustrating at worst) so I don't much attention to it.

You'll get used to sirBiggles and his pointless articles. Best thing is to simply ignore them.

Hammer, that is your opinion (re Opening Ceremony), but many will disagree.

It is a way of celebrating the event, its a show and is a way of bringing the event to a wider audience.

From what I saw of today's ceremony (on S4C as ITV couldnt be ar$ed), New Zealand put on a very good display and should be proud of it. IMO, not showing it, is nothing more than an insult to the hosts.

RWC should look at this closely, and penalise ITV for it.


Great White - thanks for your pointless response. I'll treat that with the contempt it deserves and ignore that.

Well i thought the game coverage was pretty good, no pointless slooooowwwwwmmmmoooooo replays so you miss some of the game, no Jiffy melting ear waz with his high pitched whine, no butler and moore acting like the two old blokes in the muppets but most of all NO STUART (I WAS THE BEST PLAYER ENGLAND NEVER HAD) BARNES

Yes GW, it's really pointless to discuss which tv station is best equipped and would provide the best possible coverage of the Rugby World Cup, at a time when it is being televised globably and we are looking to promote our game.

ITV coverage has always been poor and by comments made by posters today it clearly hasn't beenimproved, I think it's relevent question to ask whether ITV should hold onto the rights or not. Hardly pointless at all.

I couldn't give a flying fox for opening ceremonies - they're a waste of money and could be simplified to someone walking up to a microphone and declaring the World Cup (or Olympics or whatever) open. But plenty of other people love opening ceremonies and it's poor for ITV largely to have talked over it / ignored it (if that's what happened, I couldn't get a feed at work until just before kick off).

I'd much prefer the BBC to have the rights to the RWC, but I don't lose any sleep over it.

rugbydreamer wrote:Yes GW, it's really pointless to discuss which tv station is best equipped and would provide the best possible coverage of the Rugby World Cup, at a time when it is being televised globably and we are looking to promote our game.

ITV coverage has always been poor and by comments made by posters today it clearly hasn't beenimproved, I think it's relevent question to ask whether ITV should hold onto the rights or not. Hardly pointless at all.

Well i think they are on a lose/lose situation, spend all the time showing the opening then on to the game with no prematch analysis or world cup history/ex wining player and a quite good player focus with some good points.

But sir Biggles post was more that how dare they mentioned the E word during the build up.
My previous comment still stands the in game coverage was very good, and as i mentioned on another thread some people should stop trying to find things to be offended about and enjoy the World Cup

Knackeredknees - surely there could be a bit of balance though? obviously you want some sort of pre-match analysis, but they advertised that they would show the opening ceremony....then didn't

Spot on rugbydreamer. My point is that they advertised coverage of the opening ceremony and didn't show it.

My post is nothing to do with "the E word" as you put it... it just illustrates a point, and says more about your insecurities that you pick up on that.

I have no problem in analysis of England, do it to your hearts content if you wish to live in the past. BUT, why advertise coverage of the opening ceremony and not show it.

They have ITV 4, why not show the opening ceremony on there, and say "for coverage of the opening go to ITV 4", is it really that difficult.

ITV coverage as always been poor, but this was a step beyond.

What amazes me is that ITV dont seem to learn. The mistakes they make are always the same - shoddy technical production values, poor commentators and presenters who know nothing about the sport and couldn't be arsed to find out.

The Anglocentricity IS a problem because the license ITV operates under demands they provide a fair and equitable service to the entire UK. They fail that test miserably every World Cup.

Personally I would remove ITV's right to broadcast altogether and put it back out to tender. I hope to God that they have lost the RWC come 2015.

Was anyone else annoyed at the lack of the ref mic. Only time the ref could be heard was when shouting crouch touch etc at scrums, which of course we don't need to here.

This coupled with the commentators complete lack of knowledge of the rules made it a pain to watch.

We watched the opening on S4C, we could not believe it was not shown on ITV1,2,3 or 4! The only downside with S4C is the constant talking over the show, at least there were no adverts, well done S4C.

I couldnt believe it when ITV went to Ad break 3 times in the space of 15min.and during the 5min intervals where they claimed to be showing the ceremony we had the pundits droning on and on .Then unbelievably switched over to the England camp !!!!!I cant udnerstand Welsh but at that point i switched over permantly to the S4C

I was lucky to see the game at all today, and greatful to the person that helped out.

However I did raise an eyebrow when the monotonic English commentator made the point "Nonu's come off his shoulder there and scored. That's a lesson to all young players. Don't let guys run off the ball. Take them out first before they've got a chance to get the ball."

Erm...really?

If all the commentator is going to do is basically recite what is going on in the game and repeat the score over and over whilst getting all the player's names wrong and calling the subs incorrectly, it makes me wonder if we need a commentary at all.

Better ITV than sky, if the pay more than the BBC then yes.

The dislike of ITV seems to boil down to "they mentioned England". Which is usually what the Welsh moan about the BBC and Sky doing.

We've got Miles Harrison commentating on England's matches to look forward to.

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:Better ITV than sky, if the pay more than the BBC then yes.

The dislike of ITV seems to boil down to "they mentioned England". Which is usually what the Welsh moan about the BBC and Sky doing.

No, you want it to boil down to that. It's clear that the major issues here are that they didn't show the opening ceremony, as they promised to do, and that there were too many advert breaks. Oh, and that the commentators were duff.

Any coverage of the RWC in the UK will inevitably focus on england slightly more than the other home nations. I dont particularly like it but it is a fact of life and it would remain so on the beeb. The commentary i found really poor though and Gomersall as a co-commentator was rubbish imo.

The guys in the studio were ok but i cant stand Dayglo Thats not to say he was bad. I just cant stand the guy

luckless_pedestrian wrote:

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:Better ITV than sky, if the pay more than the BBC then yes.

The dislike of ITV seems to boil down to "they mentioned England". Which is usually what the Welsh moan about the BBC and Sky doing.

No, you want it to boil down to that. It's clear that the major issue here is that they didn't show the opening ceremony as they promised to do.

OK but the comaplints iof what they showed instead boil down to " they mentined Engflnad", it alwso get bought up elsewhere.

DI d that many peopel really get that upset that they had some analysis and rugby discussion ratehr than show an bunch of people puffing about and looking a bit confussed infromt of dignatries adn a second rate firework display? Half of you lot comaplined when they televised the royal wedding which is pretty much the same thing.

I just think its a bit of a stretch to start talking about striping ITV of its right to bid on rugby matches because they didnt show the opening ceremony which is an embaressingly pointless spectacle in the first place. That its now spread to 3 topics on this board now makes me wonder just how much people love opening ceremonines? At least they showed the Haka right? Not seen one of those yet during the tedious media coverage

The recurring complaint is that they covered rugby ( and this is then qualified with AND SDOME OF IT WAS ABOUT ENGLAND) instead of the opening ceremony. I wonder which bit it is that really got under the skins of certain people on here. If they had gone live to the Welsh camp would teh same people be making the same comments with such vitriol?

Yet another 2 dimensional rehash of England's distant past world cup glory at the expense of the advertised televisation of the opening?

It touches into the greater issue of the English believing that the world is all about England, with everyone else supporting characters in their play.

I'm not sure we needed to see coverage exclusively of the England camp on the opening day of the NZ RWC featuring NZ and Tonga, with all of the home nations involved over the weekend.

If the opening game had involved England, then maybe. Otherwise, fairly typical anglo-centric five knuckle shuffle.

With any luck Argentina and the scots will do us a favour and knock them out. Although I suspect rugby will stop existing as a sport for 2 months in the English press should that happen. Much the way 7's is only a sport when they've won something.

But the offence was about the opening ceremony not being shown not the mention of England .....

People say the opening ceremony isn't important but I would have liked to see it. And I did, when I changed the channel to RTE. Say 50% of people want to see the opening ceremony and 50% don't care. Are the people who don't care really satisfied by the inane hour of small talk and ad breaks they had instead? While the people who want to see it were left annoyed. A bit of a blunder in my opinion.

Of course the opening ceremony of any great sporting event is important.

The opening ceremony of any global sporting event is important, but I'm glad I missed it.

Last night on ITVs Rugby World Cup Preview they did not even mention Scotland!

Total disgrace.

Cymroglan wrote:Of course the opening ceremony of any great sporting event is important.

To you

I don't understand what the ITV have got with global televisation of the event. Do they have the rights in countries other than UK/Ireland? And growing the gaem domestically
1) Wales doesn't need it. International rugby is already massive there even if club rugby isn't followed by everyone
2) Growth in Ireland seems to based on provisial rugby but is ITV a main channel in Ireland? Or just an extra they can grab? If so they it's just 67% of Ulster.
3) Very little interest in Scotland and there will probably never be more than little interest
4) England is their biggest market and it's still a relatively minor sport here (3rd/4th most popular team game). The largest region for growth is England. so surely focusing on England is encouraging the growth of the sport there?

Just a few musing on the issue. Proabably all wrong.

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:The dislike of ITV seems to boil down to "they mentioned England". Which is usually what the Welsh moan about the BBC and Sky doing.

The mods must be slacking if comments like that are allowed to stand. It speaks volumes about your argument that you frequently drag the subject into borderline racial grounds as an evasive maneuver around inconvenient facts you'd prefer not to confront.

report button Knowsit if you have a problem with a post, we're all at work and can't pick up everything!

Just a heads up - if viewers don't like ITV and can get S4C, their coverage is much better. You should be able to get English subtitles on it too

I am disappointed that no one really showed the opening ceremony - particularly ITV as they had advertised it in the TV listings as such.

HammerofThunor wrote:

Cymroglan wrote:Of course the opening ceremony of any great sporting event is important.

To you

I don't understand what the ITV have got with global televisation of the event. Do they have the rights in countries other than UK/Ireland? And growing the gaem domestically
1) Wales doesn't need it. International rugby is already massive there even if club rugby isn't followed by everyone
2) Growth in Ireland seems to based on provisial rugby but is ITV a main channel in Ireland? Or just an extra they can grab? If so they it's just 67% of Ulster.
3) Very little interest in Scotland and there will probably never be more than little interest
4) England is their biggest market and it's still a relatively minor sport here (3rd/4th most popular team game). The largest region for growth is England. so surely focusing on England is encouraging the growth of the sport there?

Just a few musing on the issue. Proabably all wrong.

What has all that got to do with ITV's failure to show the opening ceremony ?

Knowsit,
The Welsh have a history of moaning about pro English Coverage, some of it justified, most of it not.

The charge of borderline racism is absurd.

Dismount!

Apologies dreamer, I do appreciate the amount of work you boys (and girls) put in in reality.

ah no apologies needed Knowsit

Sorry Cymro. Everything after "To you" was in response the ideas put forth in

Yes GW, it's really pointless to discuss which tv station is best equipped and would provide the best possible coverage of the Rugby World Cup, at a time when it is being televised globably and we are looking to promote our game.

HammerofThunor no problem mate I just presumed it was about the ceremony

To be honest I really don't care about any of the opening ceremonies for any of these type of events. Usually really look forward to the first game (which I forgot to record ) but that's it.

They shouldn't have advertised it if they weren't going to show it. and if they're going to show it they should show it properly. But (if I was watching) I would have prefered showing rugby related stuff rather than a performance of some description.

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:The recurring complaint is that they covered rugby ( and this is then qualified with AND SDOME OF IT WAS ABOUT ENGLAND) instead of the opening ceremony. I wonder which bit it is that really got under the skins of certain people on here. If they had gone live to the Welsh camp would teh same people be making the same comments with such vitriol?

If you genuinely wonder 'which bit of it got under the skins of certain people on here,' I suggest you go back to the start of the thread and read all the posts again. That should put you right.

Messymesina wrote:Knowsit,
The Welsh have a history of moaning about pro English Coverage, some of it justified, most of it not.

The charge of borderline racism is absurd.

Dismount!

Why? I don't know about you but I think that somebody who can't hold back from bringing up difference between race as a ready-made response to most arguments must have issues.

I try my best to remain impassive on these forums, I address the person, not where he's from. To some this may be over-reacting but if somebody does not make the same effort to stay objective then I'm speaking up.

Great White wrote:You'll get used to sirBiggles and his pointless articles. Best thing is to simply ignore them.

Sir Biggles has made more interesting points about rugby than you ever have.

Although I am Welsh and do admit that the English bias does irritate a little it has nothing to do with why the ITV coverage is poor. They have a chief presenter who has little knowledge of rugby, very poor commentators and pundits who mostly just come out with cliches and toe the party line to avoid the risk of saying anything controversial.

Just count our blessings that Will Carling isn't in the commentary team. Did anyone hear him talking to Chris Evans on Radio 2 this morning? It was embarrassing. The man barely knew anything about the current home rugby teams - he couldn't even comment on England! Just goes to show that just because you've played, doesn't make you a good pundit. The interview was a complete waste of time. I just hope he wasn't paid for it!

HammerofThunor wrote:Sorry Cymro. Everything after "To you" was in response the ideas put forth in

Yes GW, it's really pointless to discuss which tv station is best equipped and would provide the best possible coverage of the Rugby World Cup, at a time when it is being televised globably and we are looking to promote our game.

I didn't mean ITV was covering it globably, just that TV stations were, so that if we feel there is a problem with a stations coverage of it, then it's hardly pointless to discuss it. - Guess I didn't put that clearly enough sorry!

I recorded the opening and kiwis v tonga this morning, judging by this lot. theres only one thing I'll be watching.

Knowsit17 wrote:

Messymesina wrote:Knowsit,
The Welsh have a history of moaning about pro English Coverage, some of it justified, most of it not.

The charge of borderline racism is absurd.

Dismount!

Why? I don't know about you but I think that somebody who can't hold back from bringing up difference between race as a ready-made response to most arguments must have issues.

I try my best to remain impassive on these forums, I address the person, not where he's from. To some this may be over-reacting but if somebody does not make the same effort to stay objective then I'm speaking up.

I hear you. However I still fail to identify the racism in this particular thread. Perhaps we have a different conception of racism. Perhaps Seabiscuit has a history. You stick to your guns. I shall make no further criticism.

Fair play

Opening Ceremony

Messymesina wrote:

Great White wrote:You'll get used to sirBiggles and his pointless articles. Best thing is to simply ignore them.

Sir Biggles has made more interesting points about rugby than you ever have.

Thank you Messymesina Hope you are well...

I was determined after the demise of BBC 606, to say goodbye to the boards, but have been reading them to keep abreast of events. I just had to sign up for the RWC.